Guest Speaker: Earl Cox

Throughout the semester we have been fortunate enough to have a handful of wonderful speakers. Each presentation had been very insightful and I have really enjoyed how different all the speaker’s messages have been. Tomorrow in class we will welcome out last guest speaker for the semester, Earl Cox. Cox is a Virginia Tech alumni and graduated with a degree in communications. He also received his MBA in marketing from University of Virginia. I wonder which school he pulls for when the two teams play each other every year?!

Earl Cox is the Chief Strategy Officer & Partner for The MartinAgency and his main task is to help clients position their strategic directions. The Martin Agency is an advertising agency that is headquartered in Richmond, Virginia and was founded in July 1965. The Martin Agency is one of the nation’s leading agencies; they have consistently been one of top five marketing agencies in the country. They represent many high profile clients such as UPS, Hanes, Comcast, Wal-Mart, GEICO, Pizza Hut and Discover. They are even responsible for creating the famous “Virginia is For Lover’s” campaign, which is still around today.

Most mainstream advertising agencies are located in the city that never sleeps, New York City. It’s commonly implied that if you have made it big and you are the best of the best, then your office is located in the heart of NYC. A strategic issue that I see with the Martin Agency is being able to continually compete as a big name player even though they are located in Richmond, Virginia. They need to make sure they maintain their strong reputation so they are not forgotten about.

Question:

1.       You have worked on many different campaigns, out of all of them, which one has been his favorite and why?

Guest Speaker: Kelly Fisher, Got Milk?

Tomorrow in class we will be welcoming Kelley Fisher who has assisted in the production of the Got Milk campaign?  The campaign launched in October of 1993 and hasn’t looked back since. This advertising campaign was created by the advertising agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners for California Milk Processor Board. A few years later in 1995 the slogan was licensed to the National Milk Processor Board (MilkPEP). The purpose of the campaign was to encourage milk consumption and to help raise awareness about the nutrition milk provides.  

This “big idea” has been alive for decades and is still going strong. The campaign has been advertised all around the world and has hundreds of ads that are executed differently yet all have the same message.

“Ultimately a good strategy is inspiring. You can pull hundreds of rabbits out of the same hat, creating widely different execution that are all on strategy. The ‘milk deprivation’ strategy, for example called forth a long string of wonderful ‘Got milk?’ executions.” – Sullivan, 1998

The Got Milk? campaign is one of the most recognized and respected advertising campaigns of all time. As the campaign has matured, it’s become increasingly popular in recent years for the ads to depict famous actors, musicians and athletes sporting the “milk mustache" trademark.

Questions: 

      1. How did you begin working on the Got Milk? campaign?

      2. How is milk competing with the growing number of beverage choices available to consumers these days,  especially within the category of soft- drinks?

Guest Speaker: Julia Talbot, Burt's Bees

Some people are addicted to shopping, some are addicted to exercising and even some people are addicted to food. So what’s my addiction? The answer is Chap Stick, especially to Burt’s Bees Lip Balm. Everywhere I go I always have my Burt’s Bees with me, I can’t live without it. So I must admit I couldn’t have been more ecstatic to find out Julia Talbot, the Global Brand Manager for Burt’s Bees Lip Category, was coming to speak to our class!

Julia Talbot was Marketing major here at Virginia Tech, she graduated in 2003.Talbot also earned an MBA at Rutgers University. Before she started working for Burt’s Bees Talbot was an Associate Marketing Manager at Godiva Chocolates in NYC. She was responsible for leading development, implementation, and launch of Godiva’s seasonal collections. She loved her job at Godiva but wanted something more. In 2008 Talbot joined the Burt’s Bees team and in 2010 she was promoted to her current position as Global Brand Manager for lip products. Talbot responsibilities as the Global Brand Manager comprises of handling all aspects related to the product lifecycle, from idea generation all the way through product discontinuation. The Burt’s Bees Lip Category, which includes lip balms, glosses, and shimmers, is considered to be worth more than $100 million dollars.

Burt’s Bees is commonly described as a “natural personal care company” meaning they make products for personal care, health, beauty, and hygiene with all natural ingredients. They manufacture around 200 different types of personal care products, the most popular being lip balm. Consumers highly identify with the natural ingredients used in all of Burt’s Bees products and are willing to play high prices for these “green” products. People also identify Burt’s Bees as a company whom is committed to corporate social responsibility and environmental sustainability. They are recognized for their volunteer work and for giving back to the community.

I have been a loyal customer of Burt’s Bees for years now and I never realized, until I was doing research for this blog post, that Burt’s Bees produces many other products besides lip balms. I think a lot of Burt’s Bees products are forgotten about because consumers do not realize they make a variety of other products, not just lip balm. It’s a problem is that the Burt’s Bees brand is primarily recognized for only their lip balm. Burt’s Bees needs to raise awareness and get the word out about their other products.

Questions:

      1.  Burt’s Bees describes themselves as a “green” company, what kind of sustainable practices does Burt’s Bees have in place?

      2. What charities and non-profits is Burt’s Bees involved with? Is there any reason why you align yourself with these organizations?

Guest Speaker: Chip Shumaker,CMO, Publicis

Tomorrow Chris Shumaker from Publicis is coming to speak to my advertising class. Shumaker graduated from Virginia Tech in 1982 with a degree in marketing. Shumaker started his career in account management working for several agencies in Richmond, Virginia. Shumaker was able to learn about an agency’s perspective of marketing. He then became the head of a marketing communications department for Hamilton Beach. This position taught him how to understand the client’s side. Shumaker also founded his own consulting practice helping advertisers find the right agency partner. Shumaker has a wide range of career experiences over his 25 years in the industry, which has really helped him differentiate himself. 

Shumaker joined Publicis in 2007. He is the Chief Marketing Officer and is responsible for marketing the Publicis Worldwide brand through business development and public relations. Publicis is a French multinational advertising and public relations company. Publicis provides creative advertising services as well as campaign planning and other marketing services. Publicis is an expert in with many different types of media, from print to digital. It is one of the world's three largest advertising holding companies and had 200 offices around the world. 

Publicis  has a wonderful reputation and is acknowledged for having some top notch clients such as BMW, The Coca-Cola Company, Terminix, and Procter & Gamble. Because Publicis is such a huge global company, the possibilities are almost limitless. They have endless resources and a lot of man-power. But sometimes size can be a challenge. Publicis has to make sure they don’t let their clients feel unimportant. They have to continue to stay connected with their clients.

Question: What are the differences between clients that are located in the U.S.A. and ones that are located abroad? Has it been hard to adapt to the different type of clientele?

Learnings from Brandon Thornton

      This week I had the opportunity of hearing Brandon Thornton speak twice about two different topics. I really enjoyed both of this presentations because he did a great job getting his message across while also using cool visual aids to further justify what he was saying. Thornton seems like a very down-to-earth and straight forward person. I respected how Thornton shared his background with us and the journey he took to find his true passions in life. I think its common for successful professionals in the corporate world to expect young students to know exactly what they wan to do with their life after graduation. But the reality is, when most of us graduate, we won't know what we want to do. Thornton is a great example of this. It took him a long time for Thornton to make it to the top, but he explained that he learned a lot from his previous work experiences and they truly helped prepare him for the position he has now. It was inspiring to hear from a young professional that your life doesn't have to already be decided when you graduate. Thornton instead gave the advice of always having a voice; if you don’t have a voice you cannot make an impact. And to always do things in your own way and know what you stand for. I thought that this was great advice for a senior in college trying to figure out what to do with their life.

Thornton also gave great advice about developing a creative brief and offered a new way of looking at the process. He said that the first and most important thing to do is identify the problem, because having a clear and compelling problem beasts most insights. He calls this the "human insights approach." Thornton says that instead of trying to identify positive aspects of the brand/product, you should instead work to find a solution to the problem because this will inspire the creative team more. I thought that was a very different, yet helpful way of looking at the creative brief process. He is saying that to be inspired you need to have a clear problem so you can strategize to find the most compelling solution.

A great example of this is Procter and Gamble's (P&G) sponsorship of the Olympic games. What does a consumer goods company have to do with athletes? The main issue for P&G was to figure out how to connect with the audience watching the Olympic games. Figuring out a solution to this problem fueled the creative team to formulate an amazing strategy. The commonality they found was Moms. Mom's raise kids who turn into Olympic athletes, and they need help from P&G's commodity products to assist them. This ad did a great job emotionally connecting the P&G brand with consumers.They were able to do this by first identifying the main problem that  P&G was facing.

I admired Thornton for giving a real and honest presentation. He gave us great real word advice while also giving us advice that we can use for our creative briefs.

Guest Speaker: Brandon Thornton, Wieden+Kennedy,Nike

Tomorrow we are having a very significant guest speakers talk in class, Brandon Thornton from Wieden+Kennedy, Nike. 

 

 Our first speaker is Brandon Thornton, who is an alumni of Virginia Tech. Thornton graduated from Virginia Tech in 2006 with a degree in Marketing. After graduation he took the first job he got at UPS Freight in Richmond, VA. He sat in a cubicle all day and worked with customer service, so all he did was deal with problems. The job wasn’t for him; he knew he could do something bigger and better. He realized he needed to find his voice and figure out what he is passionate about. He had always been interested in creative things such as art and writing. Thornton also looked up to athletes like Andre Agassi, the Fab 5 Freshman from Michigan University and Michael Jordan. He realized that all of these athletes did things in their own way and had something to say. He soon discovered that Nike endorsed all of his favorite icons and decided that his dream job would be to work for Nike in a creative way. He wanted to pursue a career in advertising and decided to quit is current job and attend VCU Brandcenter, which is one of the top advertising schools in the country. Thornton graduated from VCU in 2009, when the economy was suffering. It was take a lot of time for him to reach his goal for working for Nike. For a year and a half he was a manager at American Apparel. While working there he learned about the best and worst ways to represent your brand. Finally an opportunity arose and Thornton was hired by Wieden+Kennedy, a privately owned advertising agency based in Portland, Oregon. With a lot of hard work and creativity, Thornton was able to work up to his dream position as the Lead Strategic Planner for Nike Basketball. His job now as a strategic planner is to ask the right questions, because the right questions lead to the right answers, and the right answer allow you to see the most interesting things possible. He acts as the voice of the consumer for Nike basketball.

Wieden + Kennedy is one of the top independent advertising agencies. Wieden + Kennedy has a total of 9 office all around the world, in places such as Portland, New York, São Paulo, Tokyo, London, Delhi, Shanghai and Amsterdam. They work with tons of top companies and have created countless award winning campaigns; most know them for the fantastic ads they create for Nike. Wieden + Kennedy are known for giving Nike their voice and are responsible for their famous slogan “Just Do It.” Dan Wieden, the found of Wieden + Kennedy said:

“Nike didn’t discover the power of advertising; they discovered the power of their own voice.”

Questions:
1) How exactly did you manage to work up through Wieden + Kennedy to be the Lead Strategic Planner for Nike Basketball?

2) Is the relationship between Nike and Wieden + Kennedy “set in stone?” Or is the a possibility that Nike will start working with another agency?